October 6, 2013

"I understand that people don’t like to have their mug shots posted online. But it can’t be extortion as a matter of law because republishing something that has already been published is not extortion."

They've looked at this sort of issue over that volokh.com a couple of times.

It is legal to say true bad things about people. It is legal to ask someone to give you money. But when you ask someone to give you money to keep you from saying true bad things about them, it then becomes extortion or blackmail, which are both crimes. (Substitute "having sex with someone" for "saying true bad things about someone", and you have the issue of prostitution.)

So I expect the web site to get hammered. Want to post people's mugshots? Legal. Offer to take the mugshot down if they pay you? Blackmail.

I was just thinking about this issue two weekends ago. Just on a whim I decided to Google an old friend and the first thing that popped up was his mugshot from an arrest in Kentucky for driving with a suspended license.

As far as I can tell - since I haven't spoken to him - the arrest occurred a few years ago while he was the chief surgical resident at Ohio State. It doesn't seem to have affected his career because he's had a very prestigious fellowship since and is currently a liver transplant specialist on the East Coast. But I can't help but imagine what his patients might think if they Google him and the first hit is his mugshot.